phrenology
/frənˈɑlədʒi/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.18 in modern English
19
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The pseudoscience which studies the relationships between a person's character and the morphology (structure) of the skull.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Phrenology involves feeling the bumps in the skull to determine an individual's psychological attributes."
- "MR. BURNS: Who could forget such a monstrous visage? She has the sloping brow and cranial bumpage of the career criminal. MR. SMITHERS: Uh, sir, phrenology was dismissed as quackery 160 years ago."
- "Phrenology was the practice of correlating bumps on a skull with mental powers and attributes of character."
- "One significance weakness of phrenology in the eyes of most anatomists, as Anne Harrington has shown, was that the brain comprised two structurally identical cerebral hemispheres, separated by a longitudinal fissure, whereas phrenologists held that the material sub-stratum of various mental faculties was located in only one hemisphere, and not its twin."
Etymology
Etymology tree English phreno- Proto-Indo-European *leǵ- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *lóǵos Proto-Hellenic *lógos Ancient Greek λόγος (lógos) Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-i-eh₂ Proto-Hellenic *-íā Ancient Greek -ῐ́ᾱ (-ĭ́ā) Ancient Greek -λογῐ́ᾱ (-logĭ́ā)bor. Latin -logialbor. French -logiebor. English -logy English phrenology From phreno- + -logy.
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /frənˈɑlədʒi/